An acceleration sensor is, for example, described in the German Patent Publication DE 2,158,800. When an acceleration force arises, a spherical ball which in its resting position is attracted by a permanent magnet, is moved away from the magnet by overcoming the attraction force for activating a switching operation. It is disadvantageous that the switch is a microswitch with an actuating push rod loaded by a spring force. In order to overcome the disadvantages of using springs in such systems, it has also already been recommended in German Patent Publication DE-3,338,287 to use a permanent magnet system in an acceleration sensor which comprises two permanent magnets facing each other with the same sign poles and which are slideably arranged in the direction of their lengthwise axes. The permanent magnets are ring magnets within which a reed switch is arranged. With such an arrangement perhaps one can avoid using springs. However, operating conditions for the reed switch are most difficult in practice; especially bouncing of the contacts is frequent.